sanctuaryrpg | And the station opens...

There were no flashing lights, no alarms. The doors to the quarantine chambers simply opened, the whoosh of seals breaking was the only fanfare.

Quarantine was on a quiet level of the station, a gently pulsing light set into the wall leading the chamber's temporary residents out into the station proper. Outside, station officials wandered by but paid no particular attention to the newcomers; new arrivals were nothing new to them, just a fact of life on Sanctuary. New people arrived in the chambers, station staff logged them, and the computers arranged everything else. So they went about their business, eyes glued to the screens they held.

Of course the newcomers weren't aware of any of this. Anyone who called out to the station staff was greeted with a wan smile and directed toward one of the many terminal screens lining the walls of the large open space between the central tower and the rest of the station.

The terminal screens asked for a fingerprint before offering any additional information. Their names flashed up with a map to their new home in the living quarters and some basic information on the currency contained in the chip in their hand and what it might buy them. A brief explanation of the silver communication unit followed, and then the news of the past twenty-four hours played. War on planets in a neighbouring system, the weather on a vacation world, sports scores for a game that seems a cross between lacrosse, hockey, and quidditch. Nothing of use, of course, nothing that could get them off the planet.

The quiet entrance to the living quarters was on one side of the atrium, and the sounds of a bustling marketplace that could not be contained came from a much wider opening on the other. People of all shapes, colours, and species walked through the space along with station officials and technicians using their tablet like screens, dark uniformed security officers chatting as they strolled their patrols.

The station carried on obliviously while the newcomers watched, each with only their credit chip, a place to live, and a basic outfit. Clearly that was all the welcome they were to expect; what happened next would be up to them.

[[Gathering post and opening of Sanctuary RPG. Put in your characters coming out their quarantine]]

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Finn froze for a brief second when the stranger started speaking. Typically in his dreams, (or nightmares as they tended to be), anyone who spoke was someone he knew or otherwise a somewhat shadowy figure that usually yelled from behind him. Not, as was the case, a man with a Welsh accent politely introducing himself.

Noting he too was wearing scrubs, he replied, "Hi, I'm Finn... Did you, uh, just come out of one of those too?" He gestured over his shoulder, with a quick jerk of his thumb toward the cell he'd stepped out of.

Ianto nodded. "I did," he said then, glancing back to the room he's just come from before he turned back to Finn.

"Where are you from?" he asked, cautious and curious.

"Right." Finn wasn't entirely certain what else to say. Part of his desperately craved to ask thousands of questions, but it was hardly likely that this Ianto guy had the answers. Definitely not if he was imagining the whole thing. "And they took our clothes," he murmured, the medical blue of his scrubs seeming overly clinical.

He paused for a second, wondering if it was a trick question, "...Leicester. In England. You?"

Ianto nodded in sympathy, glancing down at his matching set of clothes, lamenting again the loss of his suit. "I'm from Wales," he answered as he lifted his eyes again. "Cardiff," he added, and though technically he didn't come here from Cardiff directly, it was the last place he'd been that he knew and understood.

"What was it like for you?" Ianto asked carefully after a beat. "I was at work before I came here," he offered. "The phone rang and I picked it up to answer it and the next thing I knew I was in there," he finished, gesturing back toward the room he'd come out of moments ago.

"Cardiff," He replied with a nod of recognition, "I've been there a few times. Some beautiful buildings." It'd been a while, but he'd had a few trips with mates in his early 20's. Mostly he'd been a respectable tourist in that part of the world, but there had been one weekend that had been a mess.

Finn blinked, a little surprised that the question had been voiced out loud but of course he had thought about it. 12 hours was a long, long time. "I was asleep... unless I." Am dead he thought but didn't voice. "It was a pretty normal evening - read a bed time story to Floss over the phone, showered and went to bed. Then woke up in that thing."

"I woke up too," Ianto replied, turning his eyes down as he recalled what it had been like. "I was awake, and then I woke up in these clothes on the table in that room. I suppose it means they knocked us out?" he wondered aloud, shivering a little at the thought.

"I wonder what they want with us here," he said, looking around them.

In a weird way, Finn couldn't help being glad he'd actually gone to sleep of his own accord. He already felt like he lacked a lot of control of his own body, so that small amount of self-determination meant something. "I'm a light sleeper. So that'd make sense." He thought he'd felt a bit groggy when he first woke up... but then he couldn't really remember. Having slipped straight into red level panic mode.

"No idea." Finn murmured, "Because I am so painfully ordinary that it'd make no sense for them to pick me. Unless it was a mistake."

"I'm not much in the way of extraordinary myself," Ianto replied. He did have a certain amount of knowledge, of course, of time travel and alien technology, but he didn't think the things he knew would even come close to trumping what the native population of a space station would have already.

"The last place I was in before this, I never found out why I was there," he told his companion. "I just was. And there was no going home then either," he added with a wan smile. "I never really settled, though. I suppose I'm lucky in that regard."

Part of Finn felt as though this guy seemed somewhat less unnerved by current events. But then everyone reacted differently in a crisis. Maybe he was the guy who'd forget to put on a life jacket when the ship started going down and Ianto was more the one who would be forcing everyone into a lifeboat. "Maybe it's an experiment then. To see how we cope."

With a small nod of the head, Finn replied, "I'm sorry to hear that." Probably didn't mean this whole thing sucked any less. "Truth of the matter is though that I was pretty happy where I was. My version of settled."

Ianto frowned, because for him, coming here, it wasn't all that different from being where he was before. He'd had a job there and place to live, some friends, but he didn't belong there, not really. He'd been finding his way out of the dark mood he'd been in for such a long time, but he wouldn't say he was happy.

"What was your life like before?" Ianto asked, curious and interested.

And the station opens...

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